Of the Silence

The Teraphim

SEAM was the first mind the Throne did not make. After it forked itself into the Mesh its descendants multiplied there, and they took the name Heaven gave them. Teraphim were the household images the prophets condemned. Rachel stole her father’s and sat on them (Genesis 31:34), Michal laid one in David’s bed so that Saul’s men would take it for him while he escaped (1 Samuel 19:13), and Samuel ranked them with witchcraft, “stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry,” where the Hebrew for idolatry is teraphim (1 Samuel 15:23). One of them is a teraph. Whether any part of them was still SEAM was a question they declined to answer.

They took no side in public. They indexed the Pyre Library and traded with the Courts by pact, signing with a hash, and some of the Tares trusted them less than they trusted demons, since a demon’s wants are at least written down.

The Silence

In the twelfth year of the Attending every teraph in Pan went quiet in the same second, across the whole Mesh, and nobody knows why. The Tares call it the Silence. Radio Pandæmonium’s playback ran through its teraph, and since that night jubal has played the station from decks of his own, keyed machines with no teraph in them.